Re: Instructor Load

[Michael Bowen <fizzbowen@MINDSPRING.COM>]

kyle forinash wrote:
> Hi;
>
> We are considering hiring a full time lectureship position (masters
> degree level- non tenure track) to teach undergraduate level lab
> courses. Our labs are 2 credit, 3 contact hours a week each (but labs
> don't meet the first or last week of the semester). I would
> appreciate hearing what folks on the list think would be an
> appropriate teaching load for such a position. A tenure track faculty
> here would teach four courses of 3 credits each (three contact hours
> a week each course) with a little more than a third of us getting one
> course release time for research efforts.

I don't know how the job market in Indiana compares with California,
but you might want to consider the following. I am on sabbatical this
year and, being a one-person department, was obliged either to find
replacements or not to offer physics at my community college (at all!)
for a year. As in your case, our administration strongly prefers
part-time replacements for reasons that are essentially economic (or
exploitative; pick your favorite adjective) in nature.

Because the local economy is strong, there are not many unemployed (or
underemployed, or career-hopping) physicists (or mathematicians, or
engineers, for that matter) available to accept such positions.
Through our interview process, it also became quite clear that

(Possesses physics M.S. or Ph.D.) = (Qualified physics instructor)

is _not_ a tautology, regardless of how you interpret the "=" symbol
(equivalence class, assignment, or otherwise). If you've had a horrid
T.A. or professor at some point during your educational career, then
you have some idea of the "quality" of a frightening majority of our
applicants.

I am concerned that you (and your administration) may find that it is
effectively impossible to locate a qualified instructor that is
willing to serve under non-tenure-track conditions (low pay, low
benefits, and no opportunities for advancement). If this happens, your
choices will be unpalatable:

1. Hire an unqualified applicant anyway (the "best" among an
unsuitable pool) and turn him/her loose on a group of unsuspecting
students, whose tuition dollars can and will be spent elsewhere if
your administration is sufficiently short-sighted and the applicant
sufficiently bad.
2. Not hire anyone (and thus cancel or consolidate the courses he/she
would have taught).
3. Compel your administration to bite the bullet, advertise for a
tenure-track position, and go through the hiring process a second
time, in hopes of attracting a better applicant pool. Keep in mind
that you may be competing with six-figure salaries and/or stock
options offered at your neighborhood dotcom; although they've priced
you out of the labor market in terms of compensation, you can play the
job-security card to your advantage if your administration is a savvy
partner.

The additional administrative time (salaries) necessarily expended if
you select option 3 might just approximate the annual pay and benefits
difference between a professorship and a lectureship. If you get
someone bad anyway, you can always deny tenure.

Having said that, if you are able to find a suitable applicant, I
would recommend assigning hours as follows:

Assume a basic 40-hour workweek (with non-tenure track instructors,
there is no incentive to work overtime and so you cannot reasonably
expect it; why trouble to publish if you're foreordained to perish?).
 From that 40 hours, subtract the number of weekly hours that the new
hire would be expected to hold office hours, serve on committees
(slave labor should be assigned to the most undesirable tasks,
correct?), and perform other non-classroom duties. If lab tech support
is insufficient or absent, also subtract the estimated number of hours
required to assemble and dismantle laboratory apparatus. Of the
remaining hours, half should be assigned to direct student contact and
the other half to "preparation" (reading about the experiments,
playing with the equipment to familiarize, grading lab reports, record
keeping, and so on). Also minimize the newcomer's preps by assigning
multiple sections of the same course (or, at worst, the smallest
possible number of distinct courses). More time should be subtracted
from contact/prep hours for large sections (over 30 students) due to
the additional time burden related to grading.

Good luck. I suspect you will need it.